I spent 30 days with this controversial AI gadget

what would you learn about somebody if you're able to listen to every word they say supposed to be another bigar you're likely to hear similar voices every day Trish pis maybe be able to recognize

those people and the relationships they have Hot Pot night do they still do Hot Pot night the ambient noises that surround this person might cue you into where they live what they do for work

and eventually you'd pick up on daily routines or Little Cucumber but would you be able to take all of this audio and create something helpful I've been wearing this little thing to find out if

that that's possible it's a $50 AI wearable called be for the last 30 days it has had unprecedented access to my life listening to everything I've said just lost the pin again and

[Music] hurt and a lot like Dive Bar karaoke my time with be has been both surprising and at times lackluster but what I've learned is that this device that's

designed to help me creates far more questions about other people's privacy than my own I'm Becca I take Tech outside let's talk B physically B is a $50 AI wearable with

two microphones and an action button that can mute the mic with a single push and has a customizable long push it's slightly thicker than the s25 ultra and about as long as my thumb and it's made to be worn on you via one of the two

included bracelets or in this lapel clip and it works by transcribing every conversation it hears then analyzing those conversations you can also pair it with your calendar email and contact list so that it can better understand

understand where you are and who you may be talking to it then stores all this information and creates summaries of your day and to-do lists and it has an AI chat feature of course that can help you recall details of your life or

answer questions in a much more personal way and then there's this sort of Tinder style Left Right swiping feature where you mark facts about yourself true or false so that the system can get to know you more accurately there's also a voice

assistant that's what I set to be my long push but since this device doesn't have any speakers it responds via your phone so what's the temperature today also it says degrees so funny wait for

it today in New York the temperature is currently 39° f with scattered showers expect a mix of rain and snow throughout the day so in theory it is the perfect device for a forgetful person like

myself a little pin that can remember everything that has ever been said to me that's a dream but in practice solely listening to a world in which it has never physically moved through and then

being able to gather but more importantly sort all of that incoming sound that's a tough job and the first turtle is being able to differentiate who is who for example I don't think my

partner Hannah and I sound alike do you think that we sound alike no but B certainly does and while you can go in and manually add names to speakers B often has trouble separating

Hannah and me to begin with so labeling them does little to help and this confusion causes errors in its answers for example when I asked it what may be a good gift for Hannah well it got some

ideas right it also suggested things that I've expressed interest in or our friends have talked about I've also found that any transcript that was created in a bar or any loud environment

like a grocery store even is going to be wrong and this problem has a name it's called the cocktail party problem it's the challenge of isolating individual voices in a sea of overlapping sound and

you can see that problem happening here this is a transcript from a party I was at of about 15 people Max but B counted 34 different speakers it's messy and it's hard to pull any sort of meaningful

information from and then there are just some basic Tech problems like it sometimes loses Bluetooth connection it can be muted and unmuted far too easily like when it's in a pocket but more importantly than all that this thing can

get lost very easily and I've lost it already three times in just 30 days with it the first was the very first day I had it I was wearing it around my wrist a CES and when I got back to my hotel

the bracelet was gone thankfully the folks at B offered me a new one but a week later when I was going through airport security just lost the pin again this time uh an airport security bin

it's black and it just Blended right in and away it went but luckily retrieved it this time which is an improvement as to the last time when it was wiped off the face of the Earth then the last time

I lost it was while getting out of a car just when I thought it couldn't happen again look what's missing from its holder this little guy what this device desperately needs is integration with

Apple's fine my network which the folks of B tell me they're working on I also think it could use holders that are just a bit more SN duug or a notification on your phone when it disconnects from it that being said it's not all doom and

gloom with be first the battery life is decent when the device hasn't heard you in a while it goes into a low power mode and seamlessly wakes once it does with heavy use which is the device being on 24/7 I'm getting around 4 days of

battery life on the software side there has been some great moments as well so before I went to that party that I spoke about earlier I picked up two bottles of wine and I ended up really enjoying them but we left the bottles at the party and

I had no way to remember what they were so I opened up the chat and B and I asked and it reminded me that I got a red and white Blended petnat so good and also an Australian reasing and it taught

me that when I'm using B I should say the names of things out loud so that it can record them be also creates an ongoing list of suggested to-dos that are actually quite good and surprising it is picked up on the fact that I am

traveling to Arizona later this week and Miami next these are things that are important to me but I would have never formally written down because they aren't my work and of course some of these suggestions make no sense at all

like this one I'm not a foster parent but someone I was talking to recently is and clearly be got us confused which brings me to the first of two sort of major problems with B if it's not 100%

accurate on its own is it useful at all take for example it not knowing when I'm speaking I can go in and manually correct every transcript but that takes a lot of time and that's not helpful but

you see if I don't then it creates a huge database of false information about me and false information also not helpful okay but I thought of a Cool Fix here what if at the end of my day instead of just giving me a summary we

had a conversation and be asked me hey Becca what an exciting day you had because it always sort of adds these like fun anecdotes about your day being exciting what a fun day you had I noticed that you talked a lot about a

foster cat is that your Foster cat is that something you want to remember Not only would be then hear my voice more and hopefully be able to recognize it better but it would also clarify the data and set up a more helpful to-do

tomorrow but you can have that idea free of charge okay but the second major issue that can't be solved by a personal conversation is what in the Privacy hell are we dealing with here so beus is a

mix of AI models that include chat gbt and Gemini to name a few and while the device isn't storing audio it is creating full transcripts of conversations that it then processes off

device the company claims that its business model does not include plans to monetize your data that no human can see the data that it encrypts your data and that it does not share any of your data with third parties the company also Rec

shared this with me so I'm going to go ahead and turn on airplane mode Bluetooth is still on but no data no cellular data no Wi-Fi and as you can see um we're still doing speaker

identification speech to text that's a demo of B running entirely locally so this is a total of five models running locally and you can see even the llm

here is um doing the summarization on device with a small language model it's really cool and I hope that that rolls out soon but it's actually not my biggest privacy concern with be it's

that anyone who has spoken to me who has stood next to me and said something has also had their data process somewhere and while I'm okay with that they might not be and here in the states there's

actually some states where it's illegal to record folks without them knowing and I would love to see be do more education on the time and the place where this is right to use this and how you can better inform people that they're being

recorded because of course there's like that argument to be made that all of our data is being process accessed all the time and there's facial recognition everywhere and so on and so forth but there's a voice inside of me that

doesn't wish to be a part of that data mining machine and I just think be has an opportunity to educate folks on um how to do this more ethically yeah especially considering how many of these

devices are coming to Market popular alternative to be is plaud and it comes in two form factors an $169 pill-shaped pod that's designed to be worn called plaud note pin and the $159 notepad

shaped card designed to live on the back of your phone called pla note while both of those operate similar to B pla allows for audio playback and charges a subscription fee based on the amount of transcription hours that you use both of

these devices are heavily marketed for use at work but then there are unreleased devices like The $99 friend and the $89 Omi that seemingly work a lot like be imp plaud listening and

transcribing but also aim to be more of an AI companion with the ability to react to your world in real time Omi takes us a step further too claiming that it will soon offer a brain mod module that sits on your temple that the

company claims will be able to read your mind I'll link both companies incredibly creepy and truthfully pretty poorly acted marketing videos in the description if you're interested in seeing how each company imagines this

all playing out I've never brought anybody else I mean besides her she goes everywhere with you right mhm so after 30 days of this little pin listening to everything I've said everything I've

heard how well does it actually know me who am I Rebecca a content creator and Tech analyst based in Brooklyn New York you split time it's true passionate about

technology you have a pet cat named juny buug close you're environmentally and socially conscious sure fun fact while you go by Beck and now your full name was oh I guess you'll never know now if

you're like me the creepy marketing videos the lack of any real privacy commitment and the mixed reviews on these devices usefulness hasn't stopped you from wondering if you should buy one

and for $50 it sure is an interesting device and I've actually really enjoyed seeing what information it has gathered but I can't say it has added any like real value to my life nor have I found it all that helpful it's also worth

mentioning that these devices aren't great for the earth I mean number one AI data centers take a lot of energy not to mention the shipping um the fact that you might use this once and then never

touch it again and it just ends up in a landfill so before you buy it either make sure that you're actually going to use it or you're going to pass it on to someone who will um but yeah just keep the Earth in mind all right I've said what I need to say now I want to hear

what you think of these devices let me know down in the comments I'll see you down there I'm Becca I appreciate you so much I got a really weird one for next week so hopefully I'll see you there

also quick note I cut the price of my patreon in half I just want to see more of you there um I do a Weekly Newsletter I do monthly exclusive content and all

of my videos are there ad free so if you're not a member should join now is a great time okay see you